


our version of events.

by ftwnhgn



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Post-War, mentions of past tom/will!, this is just very very sad i guess!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22685539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftwnhgn/pseuds/ftwnhgn
Summary: They have talked at length about Blake, most of that progressing in the first few days after his death when it all stung fresh and painfully vicious, and now they usually only return to memories that make either or both of them smile. Remember Blake in a way that might not get him a medal, but that makes him everlasting in his own way. In a way he probably would have preferred in the end.The 6th of April, a few years later.
Relationships: Joseph Blake/William Schofield, Tom Blake & William Schofield
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	our version of events.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, thomas newman, what's good?
> 
> a friend once asked me what my niche in writing is, i said grieving soldiers and how to learn to live with loss, so this here was inevitable. i know the main ship is the other blakefield - and I am so definitely here for that - but I also liked to believe that these two would find some solace in each other’s company and would bond over how important tom was to each of them, and then learning how important they can be to each other. people need people. (also i know esp. william had a backstory including being married, but we go a little canon divergence here for the sake of artistic freedom.) 
> 
> i wrote this yesterday and edited it today, but if there's still errors or funky words in here i apologize as i am no native speaker - all mishaps shall be yours from now on!
> 
> title: emilie sande - read all about it iii. (there is a live performance of her doing that song that still haunts me 8 years later. felt fitting to dish it out as inspiration for this. if i could i would have used the whole song as a title.)

_“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”  
_\- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

-

Every spring feels like a new daunting awakening of old wounds. Or not _old_ per se, at least not as old as he’d like them to be, but wounds nonetheless. William would like to call them scars, but despite the years between the fateful day in 1917 and where he is now he knows there has never been enough healing for the memories not to hurt like a fresh stab into the palm of his hands or a bomb going off next to his head and crushing him under marble white debris and clocking his lungs with dust, dust, dust. He’d love to say these are the wounds he carries around that hurt the worst, but the physical pain isn’t physical anymore, and those wounds have become scars over the years. Etches in the palm of his hand, a thin white line behind his ear that he knows is a little jagged - war has never been about beauty or grace, that he knew from the beginning. They could give you as many ribbons and medals as they wanted, it doesn’t change the nature of the damn thing. Or the loss, the catastrophic loss that, to this day, sits right at the edge of his throat and is always ready to spill over.

When he thinks about the wounds he carries around, the ones that never healed into shiny scar tissue void of feeling or reaction, he means the pain in his heart and the tears still ready to fall whenever April comes around or whenever he sees Blake’s photo or reads his name. What he means with the awakening of these wounds is that he may have learned to move his life forward, but every year he gets thrown back into that moment on the abandoned farm when he could feel the loss of precious life in his arms, in the grip of his hand.

(Blake’s body has been so heavy afterwards, Blake so silent in a way that used to seem impossible to him unless sleep would dare and creep up on him, Blake’s hand bloodied in William’s like an afterthought. For a moment he looked at the blood - Blake’s blood - on his own hand and wondered whose it was. Nothing registered in those minutes. It still doesn’t and yet it haunts him as thoroughly as anything.)

Fresh stabs of grief always ready to dig into him whenever the dates on the calendar move closer to the anniversary of Blake’s death. He’d also love to say that it comes as a surprise now, but the moment he can feel the first rays of warm spring sunlight on a random day in march, they're just the harbingers of what is to come, of what he knows he’ll have to face like never-ending clockwork every year from that day on to the day he’d die. It could feel familiar, maybe it _should_ , the taste in his mouth and the lump in the back of his throat leading up to the date that he will always recognise as the same sour taste of bile he had in his mouth in the aftermath of Blake’s death, that whole day. The weather is usually bright and mellow, although sometimes it still hailed rain as is custom for the island, just like that day on the frontline. But it never eases any of the numbness in his stomach or the collapsing ruin he feels inside his heart when his eyes catch the date somewhere or he can hear it on the radio. It’s like the world has already surpassed any stage of grieving while he is stuck somewhere between the first and the last in a never-ending cycle of misery come spring.

For a while, he thought he was feeling guilty - guilt for letting Blake die right under his watch in an moment of missed caution, guilt for the fact that Blake’s mouther only had one son to return to her from that moment on, guilt for his complaints at the beginning of their mission, his bristle attitude towards Blake. Guilt for every little thing he did. He thought that was what made it so hard to breathe whenever he thought about losing Blake, even now, and how the thought alone could wring him into a version shaped out of pain and loss only with no space whatsoever left for something, someone happier. He used to see it as punishment for not being alert enough, not awake enough, having strayed too far from Blake to make sure he wouldn’t get hurt.

It used to eat him up inside, that thing he thought was the shameful feeling of guilt, until he realised it was something much less volatile but not less potent. What he was feeling was the rawness of longing, of missing, his grief dilated under the magnifying glass of his feelings for Blake when the other was still alive, and then turned into something much harder to swallow than the grief he’d feel for his fellow comrades on the battlefield and in his devision that didn’t make it home. He felt hurt for them, he felt sorry for their families, but he didn’t miss them the way he missed Blake. He didn’t think about them in such tantalising detail the way he thought about Blake even now. They don’t sit right behind the row of his teeth and the memory of them never pushed itself into the marrow of his bones the way Blake did. No, it was - is - different with Blake.

William liked the other soldiers he met, or at least could stand to be around them more or less, but that has been casual companionship between brothers. What he and Blake had wasn’t casual and neither was it something brotherly. What he and Blake had went far beyond the friendliness of fellow men on the battlefield. Of course, he could never say any of that out loud, and all the tears he let fall in the direct aftermath of Blake’s death were washed away by river water. But that doesn’t make it less real, or less what it was. He could have known Blake’s hand under his for the rest of his life, despite how foolish that wish was, just like he could have recognised the shape of Blake’s body and the sound of his voice in a sea of hundreds - or under layers of debris filling his lungs and eyes and ears.

He knew Blake and Blake knew him. They knew everything about the other that mattered, body and soul, and it made the loss of him all the more painful, _astronomical_ in size compared to how William felt about the other deaths he has seen during his time in service. Back then death had been a daily occurrence, one to better get used to instead of paying it too much mind, but nothing could have prepared him for the way Blake’s body sagged against his thighs when he died. Or how it would hurt, and how painful the imminent realisation hit him, and how it crashed into every part of him he thought to be steady and strong. Losing Blake meant losing his balance, losing one of the few rays of light he kept for himself during that awful time. Sometimes, or more frequently than he’d like to, he gets remembered of that feeling, and of how big that thing between them was, and it chokes him up worse than any rubble ever could.

It makes him miss Blake just so much more.

He knows he shouldn’t, can’t even talk about it in the way he’d want to, but spring opens every wound that Blake left behind when he left and it is hard to look past those, hard to look past the feeling they now leave behind. If Blake wanted to be remembered so badly, he chose the best and worst way of attaining his goal. William misses him like a part of himself and his absence is a phantom pain sitting in the warm breeze of every spring day William lives through.

“You’re a bastard, Tom, you know that?”

His voice is rough from not using it for most of the day, but he still directs his words at the headstone in front of him with the same air of annoyance he’d use to lay into the man himself with. Well, the real thing would never come around to hear him complain like that again, so he has to find another way these days. Does him some good, complaining less - back during the war he could nitpick through everything happening around him. Blake used to laugh about that until he would get a little annoyed by William’s annoyance and tell him to cut it out and be merrier, or at least to keep it to himself if the day’s events couldn’t rise his mood and instead only rise his hackles.

Even back then, Blake was the only one to get through to him. William is less and less surprised by that as more years go by.

A breeze sweeps through the cemetery and ruffles the short grass all around the headstones and the pathway, and William takes it as the sign it clearly is, a sigh leaving him at the melodrama of it all. It’s easier this way, to see the little signs in the blooming of cherry trees and a strong wind running through his hair, instead of breaking down onto his knees and letting all the pain spill out like that. He could do that once, he couldn’t bear to do it again.

“You’ve really picked the _best_ bloody time for this, have I mentioned that yet? I probably did, but it’s true. Couldn’t make me feel miserable in, say, January or something? To fit the mood and all. No, you settled on the best bloody weather, but of course you did. Wouldn’t know you any other way,” he goes on, arms now folding around his torso and teeth grinding together to keep the tears from spilling over. He’d not let himself cry in the middle of the day in public, even when the time and place seem appropriate for it. As much as he is hanging on by a thread, he has learned to keep a sure grip on that thread - he always had a strong grip on whatever was in his hand, may it be a letter, a thread, or another hand. He is good at that, at least.

Still, he rubs the back of one hand over his eyes just to make sure that nothing would dare and flow over, and foregoes looking directly into the sun. These days that could end in a headache faster than sitting next to a big band playing a loud tune. Ever since the war he’s become sensitive to that, he’s become sensitive to a lot of things, but he wants to keep most of that away from this day, from Blake. Somehow he doesn’t want Blake to see how miserable he could get despite having made it home in one piece - more or less, with a piece of him missing but home nonetheless - and so he keeps his brows furrowed but doesn’t let his gaze stray from the name on the headstone, the dates carved in beneath it, the stone itself. Steady and strong. If he’d have to describe Blake in a few words, these would be a part of that. Steady, strong, and gentle. And bright, _so bright_. He’s the only person William’s ever known who could be as stubborn as a rock - as he himself is - and just the same degree of forgiving.

All the more reason to keep himself steady in this moment.

“Life is - it’s the same, I guess. Your mother’s better though, made it through the nasty cold she had the past few months, seems to shake herself away from it less and less so these days. But she’s up and running again and I’m pretty sure she’s going to come around here later, if she hasn’t already.” He looks at the flower arrangement on top of Blake’s grave - could have come from his Mother or another officer maybe \- and he stares at it for another second, can’t tear his eyes away. “God, I just wish you were here, Tom. I just wish you were here.” It comes out as a ragged sob and he catches himself on it with the back of his hand pressed against his trembling mouth. It’s the middle of the day and the hole in his chest that Blake left behind there when he took a part of William with him when he died feels like the biggest abyss William has ever come across. Crossing it seems impossible, acknowledging it now seems even worse.

The moment is so still, like the aftermath of a grenade going off right by his head when there is nothing but emptiness even before the ringing comes in, that he doesn’t realise the touch against the middle of his back until he registers a shadow crossing over the grass right next to his own, overlapping at the edges.

“I miss him too,” Joseph admits in that quiet tone of his, somber and yet wrecked with grief in a way maybe only William understands fully, and when William looks over to him he stands with both hands in the pockets of his jacket, the lines on his forehead that only ever show themselves when he is overcome by emotion visible.

For all the things the war took from William, it gave him one thing, something on his own - it gave him _someone_.

He keeps a quiet gratitude close to his heart in a place in his chest that is still vital and alive and nurtures it on painful days like today or painful nights that usually keep him awake with the echoes of bombs and screams. There is a sturdy warmth in that lively part of him, that part that the war couldn’t kill no matter how hard it tried, and somehow Joseph Blake has eased his way into that part of William and somehow William has decided he could stay there.

After that wretched day, the first day they met in the aftermath of Blake’s death hanging over them and, through that, binding them together, word of the success of William’s mission had gone out and made it through the frontline and then the ranks at the back and he was allowed to stay with Lieutenant Blake’s devision, at least until he healed from the worst of his wounds and could write the letter to Blake’s mother to notify her of the death of one of her sons all while the other was keeping watchful vigil by William’s side. At the beginning he thought it was anger, maybe, just like he has mistaken his longing for his guilt. But then the longer Joseph stayed by his side during these days, he realised it was the offer of shared solitude - the understanding between two people that the only refuge they could find would be in the spot that marked where they were connected, the hollow feeling in their chests from missing a brother and a friend and just missing so much more than that too.

They both knew Blake, knew him better than most, and somehow it has bound them together before they could even know each other. That handshake, the crumbling dawn of realisation on Joseph’s face that William knew so intimately because he felt it on his own only a day before, and the lingering promise of a crossroads only the two of them could find themselves at. Even if the war would have pulled them apart and they would have never seen each other again, that would have never gone away.

But they found each other in the war, somehow stuck by each other even when William was back in his own devision with Leslie and the others and Joseph stayed with his own devision. At that point the war was nearly over and they had only spent a few months apart after spending the first few days in the wreckage of Blake’s absence together - quiet company in the middle of waiting for orders, sharing stories of the man they both knew so well when either of them could stomach to recall memories, becoming a pillar to lean against for the other. One afternoon William fell asleep against the trunk of a tree again and when he woke up he found, in the early darkness of the night, his forehead rested against Joseph’s shoulder. Neither of them said anything about it, but they both knew and understood it for what it was.

Sometimes it doesn’t _need_ many words to comfort someone, to bridge the gap between heartache and the first glimpses of healing. William learned that during that time, just how he learned that no distance could tear apart the steady bond made out of a wreckage. They were linked together from the moment William reported to him, made inseparable by the unspoken acts of solace, and the gravitational pull they instilled between them in the proximity created by shared secrets and shared loss.

They found each other again at the end, went home together. It seemed like the answer to most of the questions left in either of them. Joseph’s a little taller than Blake and his hands are bigger, and they are always warm, and it hasn’t hurt when William let himself be held by them the first night after they both made it back home. It felt more like shelter. It felt like solace.

Now, William looks at him silently, studies a face he has grown to know just as well as Blake’s if not better now with the years gone by, and Joseph manages to remind him so much of Blake and also soothes something in him with how _different_ he is. The first few days it nearly made William just cry again, how alike and unlike Blake Joseph was, but now that has mellowed into something less painful, not painful at all even most of the times. Joseph is his own man and while there is an invisible connection between him and Blake that could and should never be shaken, William understands that he exists all for himself, stands strong because he is who he is and not because he shares a bloodline with a man William loved. He can lose himself in Joseph without fear of the haunting echoes of the war taking him under and that is something he couldn’t weigh in gold if he tried, that is - unmatched. And he loves Joseph for that.

Joseph catches him looking and the hint of a mellow smile sits at the edge of his mouth, the silent offer of comfort right there in the lines of his face, and while William doesn’t dare to step closer he acknowledges it with a slight tilt of his head. They have learned to be each other’s safe houses, each other’s lighthouses.

William clears his throat, tries to chase the dryness away. Says, “I don’t think there’s a day I don’t miss him. It’s just, it’s -“

“Always there,”Joseph finishes for him, his smile not turning unking but something a little sadder, something made of memories he can’t get back and can’t let go. “It never leaves.”

William nods, looking back at Blake’s name on the headstone and the date and he can feel the burning pain in the middle of the hollowness in his chest and it’s now not so bad anymore, not so unbearable, with Joseph by his side. It still hurts, and he doubts that will ever end, but it doesn’t make him feel like he wants to collapse on the spot anymore. “He never does,”William concedes, his own voice barely more than a whisper.

They don’t need to say more than that. They have talked at length about Blake, most of that progressing in the first few days after his death when it all stung fresh and painfully vicious, and now they usually only return to memories that make either or both of them smile. Remember Blake in a way that might not get him a medal, but that makes him everlasting in his own way. In a way he probably would have preferred in the end.

Joseph moves forward and puts his own flowers down and William watches him kneeling in front of his brother’s grave, one hand pressed against the damp soil there, the pale skin illuminated golden by the afternoon sun on this April day, and he doesn’t say anything again but he commits it to memory nonetheless - makes sure it has a place where can later tell Blake how much his brother loves him and how that never ended, never even wavered, only gotten stronger and bigger over the years.

If William’s love for Blake has been astronomical, Joseph’s could have moved the earth, _anything_ , really. William would even go as far as to say it could still do so, Joseph never stopped loving his brother.

They go home in moderate silence after that, wanting to leave before the rush of evening visitors would come by and pay a visit to who they lost in the war, and knowing either of them would return at another time this week again just for another sole moment of remembrance. As much as it hurts, William also doesn’t want to not go, doesn’t want to forget Blake or the mark he made on his life, wants to make sure that Blake would know how loved and missed he is even after his death. He has told Joseph that before and Joseph agreed in that own quiet voice of his again, admitting that he usually tries to visit more often than just on the appropriate days one is supposed to go, and William understood that, took Joseph’s hand in his silently and told him, after a long while, how he’d too make sure that Blake wouldn’t be forgotten.

It feels like the least they could do.

The floorboards creak under their feet when William opens the door to the flat and lets them in. Joseph helps him out of his coat and shrugs out of his jacket and they work through their shared routine in the same mutual silence they kept on their way home, only thankful no one really looked at either of them, still more than careful whenever they went anywhere together, but also not wanting to be apart from each other today. They end up in the kitchen, William sitting on one of the chairs at the small table there and Joseph preparing tea for the both of them, only ever reaching out with a hand to graze the back of William’s neck or touch his fingertips against the scar behind William’s ear - something he does more on instinct than deliberately these days as he usually runs a hand through William’s hair to soothe him whenever he is agitated or can’t sleep, and the curtains are drawn and no one can see them and William leans into every single touch for the anchor they are, even reaches out on his own as Joseph waits for the water to boil to pull him in with a hand on his hip.

He keeps himself seated and waits until Joseph’s close enough before he presses his cheek against the soft material of the shirt Joseph is wearing, something in a light grey with darker stripes, and just closes his eyes for a moment. Just as ever, Joseph’s hands settle on the top of his head and run through the thick strands there that have grown out more over the years with no military standard to regulate his appearance by, and he exhales heavily. On a day like to today every little thing weighs tons and tons, and nothing could ever feel light or easy, but this helps. The closeness helps. Joseph helps.

“I know, Will, I know,” Joseph replies and his palm curves around William’s jaw and his cheek, holds him like this as the kettle makes a whistling noise but he doesn’t move away, instead he holds William a little closer still and William curls both of his arms around Joseph’s torso. Joseph leans over him and presses a kiss to his head.

They have learned to communicate like this, with no words needed between them and only touch and proximity leading them, and William is thankful for it right now, so thankful for it, because he doesn’t have any words left as he can feel all the blood he thought he could keep inside flow out in the painfully reopened wounds of his grief. He knows he is going to feel better in a few days, is going to go back to the usual background noise of carrying Blake around with himself wherever he goes in a memorisable form of longing and fondness, but for now he just wants to let himself be held to keep himself from bleeding out. This is how Joseph and him mend their wounds, the ones concerning today and any other the war or just life have left behind, and his fingers dig into the material of Joseph’s clothes as if he could draw him in any inch closer, wanting to not let him go.

This is something he has also learned from the war, from Blake, to never let anything go anymore. Not if he can’t help it, not if he can fight for it instead. It might be the only thing the war has given him besides Joseph, and he holds both in his mind and his heart with quiet reverence. He knows what he’s got, no matter what.

Right now he holds on and lets spring come. He lets Joseph pour him a cup of tea, lets them sit side by side as they quietly talk about the few memories of Blake they can bear to say aloud in the space of this day, lets himself be led to bed and dressed down and held against Joseph’s body that is a home as much as it is a refuge - still and always first a refuge - and it’s the closest to peace he’ll ever feel on this day. It’s the closest he feels to being put back together and he says as much to Joseph in the late hours of the day, and the other’s answer is his fingers weaving through William’s and holding their joined hands against his heart.

The steady beat of it, the solace settling into his veins in tandem with that sound, is the last thing William registers before he falls asleep and leaves the day behind.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i have a brother who i'd walk through twenty frontlines in the middle of a war for, so i obviously sobbed loudly when joseph found out his brother died. that was fun!
> 
> hit me up to yell about how this movie is a cinematic masterpiece and how film twitter dudebros have no idea how a) emotions work and b) what an anti-war movie is, or, idk, leave a comment here if you want! I love to chat and I don't bite and I'd love to talk about this film !
> 
> friendly reminder: you are loved, you are enough and you will achieve great things. you are right just the way you are, a living and breathing thing. keep going.


End file.
